Tuesday, September 18, 2007

In the news today: what passes for the Iraq government has banned the operations of Blackwater USA, a secretive private army based in North Carolina, after a violent attack that left 8 Iraqis dead. Blackwater is one of several "security firms" operating in Iraq on a no-bid U.S. Government contract from the Bush administration.

Blackwater: the name has the same slightly chilling Kafkaesque quality that "Homeland Security" has. Their website brags they are "the most comprehensive professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping, and stability operations company in the world."

Okay, let's call a spade a spade: they are the largest mercenary army in the world.

Mercenaries: guns for hire. You got the money, we got the muscle.

Drug lords know all about this shit.

So did the Nazis. Hitler's Stormtroopers, least we forget, were a private paramilitary organization.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

I swear I must be Google's biggest fanboy. It's a little embarrassing, really.

Their latest thing may seem no small feat until you've attempted to take it on yourself: trying to add RSS feeds to web pages. Their Google AJAX Feed API makes it quick and (relatively) easy. You simply insert some JavaScript, request a (free) numeric key, and paste the target feed URL(s) into your html. For the more adventurous, you can, with a little effort, get in and create customized CSS styles to format the feeds to suit yourself.

All relatively simple.

In addition to the AJAX Feed API, they've also got code to integrate search (natch) and Google maps, and a slew of other tasks. They've recreated an amazing collection of tools for the small time web developer, all for free.

Saturday, September 08, 2007

While out wasting time researching on Slashdot the other day, one link led to another until I found myself at the TiddlyWiki site.

TiddlyWiki is a bit of an oxymoron in that it really isn't for collaboration. What it does, is allow you to create a non-linear set of notes on an html page that can be easily edited and linked to each other, like a wiki does. It can be printed, copied or changed.

All TiddlyWiki is, is a web page. A very clever, self-editing, DHTML-enabled web page. To format the text (and create links) requires a fairly simplified markup system (I'm assuming it's more or less standard Wiki markup).

Save it and you're done. Load it on a flash drive and you can take it with you. Oh, and did I mention it's free?

To use TiddlyWiki, you just download an empty TiddlyWiki html page from the TiddlyWiki site and load it in your browser as a local file.

That's it.

No executable, no zip file. Since it's just a web page, it will work on any platform that has modern web browsers, including Windows, Mac OS, Linux, BSD, and others.

TiddlyWiki was created a couple of years ago by Jeremy Ruston, so it's not a new thing. It looks as if an active group of people are supporting it.

The TiddlyWikiWiki (say that fast a few times), a true Wiki, has more information. But the easiest way to find out is just go to the site and play with it. You may find it as cool (and useful) as I did.